Good News for Apple Design: Jonathan Ive Taking Over Human Interface Group

With any luck, design like this is on the way out.[image via creative bloq]

With any luck, design like this is on the way out.[image via creative bloq]

While Hurricane Sandy wreaked havoc on Monday, Apple experienced some tumult of its own in the form of an executive shake-up. It's significant in that the new order will influence the company's design aesthetic.

Here's what it boils down to:

Scott Forstall, the SVP in charge of iOS, was a big fan of skeuomorphism. That's the tacky design practice whereby you place visual elements from old media into new media, i.e., needlessly adding graphics of a spiral binding at the edge of the screen to make an app look like a physical notebook. As per his position at Apple, Forstall had the juice to have skeuomorphism integrated into the software of the products.

Jonathan Ive is reportedly not a fan of skeuomorphism, but as his domain was previously limited primarily to the physical design of Apple's products, there was little he could do about it.

Well, Forstall's now out, and Ive is further in. On Monday it was announced that Forstall's (probably forced) departure is scheduled for 2013, and Ive's domain will expand to include taking charge of Apple's Human Interface, i.e., UI and UX.

That's an awesome move on Apple's part. Yes, I'm biased; I think skeuomorphism sucks. It doesn't add anything to my experience to have the Notes app look like a legal pad, or to have the top of my Calendar app look like it's made out of desk-ledger leather. And the Address Book software is terrible; it's made to look like a book, yet doesn't work like one—there's no easy way to flip pages from the All Contacts view.

Unrelated to skeuomorphism, try adding a reminder in Calendar and setting an alarm to go off five minutes earlier than the event; it requires an absurd amount of mouseclicks to accomplish and you cannot just "tab" to the "minutes" field. There's no way this feature was designed by a designer.

Critics of the move who say that Ive's experience is limited to physical design, do not understand that industrial design is meant to encompass the user's experience in total, and wrongly assume that Ive is some kind of glorified draftsman. No, Ive taking Human Interface over can only be good for the company, and I believe we'll at last see Apple's software catching up to the hardware.

"This is a doubling down on integrating hardware and software design," industry analyst Patrick Moorhead told Computerworld. "There's now just one decision maker."

The latest design news, jobs & events. Straight to you every other week.

Join over 300,000 designers who stay up-to-date with the Core77 newsletter...

In the past, this was appreciated for their metaphor.
They should maintain the relation instead of over-doing/over-designing it. Otherwise, in current scenario with experienced USER, sometime it looks like skeuomorphism. They just need to add both display/UI options & let the user decide.

I always liked skeuomorphism to an extent. A bit of texture and a resemblance to physical objects adds some character to an application, and when it's the norm, inconsistencies between apps are expected rather than grating.
The direction Apple was taking was thus quite tolerable. The iTunes Movie Trailer app is a great example. The app had the appearance of an old-timey cinema, which is great for an app about trailers. It's much nicer than the default bluish glass with pinstripe gray background.
Where I found it getting over-the-top was with iOS 6. Passbook is just obscene. The UI is not efficient in any measurable way, and the shredder animation is just plain overkill.
So, if Ive can trim down the UI and clean it up, I'll welcome it, but I do hope Apple doesn't entirely lose skeuomorphism. Some people like it.

All software employs some form of skeuomorphism. Buttons, pages, scrolling, even typography. All of these things are evolved from physically real actions or objects. Overt skeuomorphic ornament can be "tacky." But it can also be used tastefully to aid the UI and UX.
http://xk9.com/bones/what-will-jony-do/

Excellent post, but I don't agree completely.
Skeumorphism is good in nature, when you use it on mobile devices that are really near to what they intend to imitate: an agenda o a notebook. That's OK when the size or the objects or the real usage are similar: an iPad is the same size as a notebook, an iPhone is similar to a calculator... The you can take advantage of touch-screens, make it accurate, real, nice and easy to use.
The problem is to do this on computers: size changes, but so does experience.
The fail is not just abusing of skeumorphism -you can do it if the learning curve is better, and in the end it is -just think about how your granny would react to Metro interface instead of iOS! The real fail is thinking that your aesthetic aspirations are higher than users' capabilities of understanding the UI.
However, I'm not very confident on how Ive will be able to deal with it. Surely he will feel tempted to give it a 180 degrees turn, but Microsoft has already made that step. Everything that way will look like Apple will copy Microsoft strategies and that's not good.

Skeuomorphism is not partially good or bad, it really depends how it is used. I do not think the Notes in iOS is bad. It really communicates that it is a quick notepad where you can write simple stuff on it and throw it away. If Notes was in sleek graphics I would probably not get that function and not use it that way. It would feel like a useless typewriter app.

To me skeuomorphism doesn't suck any more or less than techy digital UI aesthetics. It's when these approaches are needlessly taken to their extreme that things start to suck. A soulless, sterile, cookie-cut UI is every bit as nauseating as uber-skeuomorphism. Subtleties are lost while appeal and intuition evaporate. Ive is a master designer. I think we'll see a welcome, careful, thoughtful, meaningful use of both techniques.

I agree - skeumorphism (usually) sucks. I find it interesting that Apple (and many other software companies) have had an ever-changing stance on the subject, probably due to whatever research is newest, and who is calling the shots.
I highly recommend that people read the Apple Human Interface Guidelines publications, even if they aren't developing Apple software (or really, any software), because they are amazing windows into human behavior and learning patterns.
I remember the guidelines from around OS 10.1 - 10.3 specifically addressed skeumorphism by recommending that "physical metaphors" be used only for transitional technology, as a way to ease users into the concept of using software for something that they used to use a physical object for. It was recommended to move away from it as quickly as practical, since the physical metaphor, taken too far, limits the functionality of the software artificially (as in the Calendar app), and creates cognitive dissonance when the software can't entirely behave like the actual object (the Address Book app). Seems to me that Apple is going against their own guidelines, and getting the anticipated result - less optimal software.
I remember an early stab at breaking the physical metaphor - remember when MP3 player software always had a separate button for Play and Pause (and possibly even a third Stop button), as in a physical tape deck? iTunes changed to a single pause/play button that changed state depending on whether music was playing or not. That was seen as a bit of a big deal at the time, but ultimately it was the right choice - it confuses no one anymore, and it makes the software easier to use.

Not to ignore the profound scope of the brutality of hurricane Sandy but we are happy to say that, finally, Core77 is, much like "Rubber Duck" Penwald of Sam Peckinpah's Convoy, cruising these crazy (information super-) highways atop diesel-fueled horses.Tip of the trucker hat (and a knock on wood) to...

BUNDSHOP Expose from BUNDSHOP on Vimeo.It's taken a summer's worth of exploring the Chinese design scene, but BUNDSHOP, a new online platform that will bring Chinese design to the rest of the world, is nearly set to launch next month. We recently had a chance to stop by their Shanghai...

Any weary traveller knows that the best way to experience a city is through the eyes of a local. That's where Valet.com steps in. The newest offering from trendspotter Josh Spear, Valet.com is a highly curated member-based program that connects design-driven hotels with the jet-setting creative set.By booking accommodation through...

The 2012 edition of Interieur—the European Design Biennale taking place in Kortrijk, Belgium, October 20–28—is bound to become one of the top global design destinations this year. Curator and Interieur President Lowie Vermeersch (former head of design at Pininfarina and now CEO of the Turin-based GranStudio), set out to reconnect...